Will we ever learn?

Alison Bezzina Sunday, 9 November 2014, 09:00 Last update: about 12 years ago

Last Monday I met an Eritrean mother of three who, despite living in appalling conditions, is eternally grateful to Malta for giving her children the chance to grow up safely. A couple of years ago, in an attempt to get away from the dangers of her war-torn country, 26-year-old Semihar crossed over to Malta on a small, rickety boat, hoping for a safer and better life.

This paper ran a video story about Semihar and also made an appeal for help. Many people were generous and opened their hearts, but having held Semihar's innocent baby in my arms, I sincerely hope that she never grows up to read the comments that some people left on the message board and on Facebook.

I am totally convinced that people who comment so cruelly and negatively have never met anyone in Semihar's situation, at least not in person. To me, they are racists devoid of emotion, compassion or empathy. Sadly, most justify their racism and hatred by saying that they are not particularly against Africans but against people who enter the country illegally.

Conveniently, they fail to understand that asylum seekers and refugees such as Semihar are not in Malta illegally. They enter the country irregularly (not illegally) because they have no other way of doing so, but then, once they are recognised as genuine asylum seekers (and most are) they have as much right to be in Malta as you and I. Once they are out of detention, they are even given a Maltese ID card and are legally allowed to work because, shock horror, it is their right!

I don't even try to explain this to the likes of Robert Henry Bugeja - a Labour candidate who was vying for Karmenu Vella's seat in Parliament and who, despite his social responsibility as a public figure, spewed racist venom on his Facebook wall. I don't bother because, as his parents failed to bring up as a decent man, it is now up to his party to explain such basics to him. But instead, the Labour Party merely made him remove his status from Facebook and still backed him as a candidate on the party ticket. But this is all good, because it's when a politician and a party are caught unawares like this that they show their true colours, thus helping us voters make a more informed choice when the time comes.

Meanwhile, today the world celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and last week the seven crosses that had been put up as a memorial dedicated to those who had died while trying to flee East Germany went missing.

A group called "Centre for Political Beauty" claimed responsibility for this. They purposely 'stole' the crosses and placed them near today's border fences that are meant to keep Middle Eastern and African refugees from entering Europe.

And while the EU is considering stopping its rescue programmes because they are way too expensive to run, according to German news site Spiegel Online, Germany will be spending at least $1.5 million to decorate the former course of the Berlin Wall with illuminated balloons.

One lost life is a loss too many, but given the numbers that we're talking about, the huge loss of life, the overcrowded boats and the increasing desperation of human beings like us, one cannot but question if Europe has conveniently lost its memory.

Only last Monday, the bodies of 24 people believed to have been on a boat carrying migrants to Europe were found near Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait. Last year we lost almost 400 people in one go and we saw EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in tears, telling us that something will be done. We saw the coffins in Lampedusa, and we were urged to accept more refugees; and so we did and should; but since then EU policies have not changed one bit. Since then we had yet another big disaster in which we lost 200 refugees in August. And now, for the cherry on the cake, Italy has said that it will stop rescuing people because it is costing the country €9 million a month.

The only piece of good news (which could easily backfire) came last week in the form of a European Court of Human Rights' judgment that prevented the return of an asylum-seeking family to Italy after they had somehow made it to Switzerland.

The Afghan family, with young children, managed to travel to Switzerland from Italy and claimed asylum there. Of course, Switzerland tried to return the family to Italy but the European Court of Human Rights decided that returning the family to Italy without a guarantee of appropriate conditions, would violate their human rights.

This is a clear change in direction, a landmark ruling if you wish, which means that vulnerable asylum seekers cannot be automatically sent back to the country in which they were first registered without considerable guarantees.

But could this be an easy loophole to get around the Dublin Agreement? Will it serve to protect the vulnerable or will it further incentivise countries such as Italy, Greece and - to a certain extent - Malta to be less accommodating?

Between 1961 and 1989, at least 136 people died trying to cross from East to West Berlin. This summer alone saw more than 3,000 migrants dying while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. And yet we candidly celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, whilst hypocritically fortifying new borders.